City to Bay 2014

On Sunday I was one of 36,000 people who ran in the City to Bay Fun Run. It’s a 12km event, starting at the north edge of the Adelaide CBD, taking us south through the centre of the city, down Anzac Highway, finishing on Jetty Road in Glenelg. A predicted high of 22°C, no winds and clear skies made for great conditions.

This was my fourth go at the City to Bay since taking up running in 2011. I didn’t get much of an opportunity to train this time, as last week I cycled in the 120km Amy’s Gran Fondo, and the fortnight before that I spent a week in the Victorian Alps back-country skiing. As I was busy (recovering from) these events I only had two training runs the past month; a 12km two weeks before hand, and 7km two days before to make sure my knee had recovered from the bike race.

As it turns out the cross-training did wonders. I didn’t believe the 4:25 min/km splits that RunKeeper was reading out to me, but the legs were more than happy to move along at that pace. I got to the bay in 52:42, and the splits were correct – I managed to maintain a consistent pace the entire way. The exception was the last 200m, where I threw my legs as far as they would go and managed to get 13th in the Crazed Sprint for the Line segment on Strava, with a 2:13 km/h split.

I improved by 4:38 from last year, and importantly, bet Greg by 20 seconds! It’s going to be hard to back that up next year.